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Terrific music making with a light directorial touch brings mixed results to Monteverdi's 1643 masterpiece. 

Harmonious images and geometric designs frame an effective staging and well sung performance of Monteverdi's last opera.

Conducted by Iván Fischer, a strong cast delivers an entertaining performance of Monteverdi's opera in a production that amuses, but does not quite thrill.

Kate Lindsey’s voice is luminous, effortlessly regulated in every register, and intertwined magically with the gleaming soprano of Slávka Zámečníková, a very special new jewel in the Staatsoper ensemble who is every inch a star.

Monteverdi’s last opera, recomposed by Máté Bella for a modern orchestra and a jazz combo, is an over-the-top, glitzy romp with plenty of casual sex and even more casual violence.

A wonderful cast conducted by William Christie in a new production of L’incoronazione di Poppea at the Salzburg Festival. 

Calixto Bieito sets Monteverdi’s L’incoronazione di Poppea in a hedonist, decadent society whose citizens are defined by their egotism, ambition and sexual exploits.

The Staatsoper's new L'incoronazione di Poppea is serious, intelligent but short on fire.

Pinchgut Opera's L'incoronazione di Poppea is a glorious feast of singing, acting and playing but the production is brutal, taking Monteverdi's vision of corruption in high places to excessive lengths.

The final opera in Sir John Eliot Gardiner's Monteverdi 450 trilogy features an excellent cast and inspires deep emotion.

A musically sensitive account of Monteverdi’s Poppea, with simple staging and 1950s costumes, sees singing triumph noticeably over the relative theatrical inexperience of HGO’s talented young cast. 

In Shoreditch, the Royal Academy of Music showed off some superb singing in a chilling exploration of tyranny and unrestrained power.

The workshop of Accademia di Bel Canto "Rodolfo Celletti" exhibits young rising singers in an all-time masterpiece. 

Pared-down sets and minimal stagework draw eyes and ears forward in concentration. Whilst the text is at times searingly erotic, Nero and Poppea never touch.

Opera North's static production of Monteverdi's The Coronation of Poppea directed by Tim Albery takes place in a murderous psychopath’s private cellar. 

Nina Brazier’s production for Ryedale Festival Opera, on tour at Grimeborn, resoundingly succeeds on all levels, giving us an evening of luxurious beauty, abandoned sensuality and superb characterisation.

When the Baroque movement in art ended, the backlash was severe. The very adjective became an insult: the cold, clear, rarefied eye of 18th-century Neoclassicism found its opulence stifling, its luxury oppressive, and its profusion of ornament, ugly.

“I apologise to those who anticipated togas, or 17th-century Venice”, writes James Conway in the programme notes to his production of Monteverdi’s The Coronation of Poppea, currently running at the Royal College of Music’s Britten Theatre in London.

Claudio Monteverdi was employed by Victor Gonzaga, the Duke of Mantua, but was dismissed from the court when his son Francesco Gonzaga took title in 1612. Monteverdi moved to Venice to take up the appointment of Director of Music at St Mark’s Basilica.

Written near to his death, Claudio Monteverdi's L'Incoronazione di Poppea – a Roman tale of obsession, jealousy and betrayal – launched the medium of opera onto the stage and in doing so changed the course of music history forever.